In 2021, brands and marketers globally mined valuable insights about life in a post-COVID world. The one key aspect that stood out was the meteoric rise of video as the preferred content format for consumers globally! Marketers are turning to video marketing increasingly to cater to the burgeoning mass of video consumers. Read on to learn about the top video marketing trends for 2022.
In the US, people are spending 323 minutes per week watching content on their mobile phones.
In Wyzowl’s recent survey, 96% of respondents reported an increase in video consumption due to COVID. Experts believe the shift to be permanent, as Gen-Z and millennial consumers demand short-form, mobile-optimized vertical video content from brands.
E-Commerce grew from 11% in 2019 to 18% in 2022, poised to touch 24% in 2025. According to Adobe, U.S. e-commerce spending will top $1 trillion in 2022. Hot on the heels of E-Commerce growth is video’s rapid rise. Video is literally taking over!
- According to Cisco’s Annual Internet Report, by 2022, around 82% of the internet traffic will originate from online video.
- As seen in Wyzowl’s 2021 State of Video Marketing report, 86% of businesses indicated that they were using video as a marketing tool.
- 93% of businesses agree that video is a critical part of their strategy.
- 94% of marketers believe that video improves product understanding, and 87% agree that video gives them a positive ROI.
Video has quickly emerged as a critical part of the modern marketing mix, as marketers scramble to meet fast-changing consumer expectations. According to Salesforce’s latest State of Marketing report, the most valuable digital channel of 2021 was video, with 90% of marketers employing it in their engagement strategy.
The writing on the wall is clear: video is going to dominate consumption trends, and brands need to align their digital experience strategy to give consumers what they want. We have compiled a list of the top 6 video marketing trends that will influence business growth in 2022.
#1: Shoppable Video
As video becomes the de-facto method of customer engagement, brands are turning to shoppable videos to fuse their products into video content seamlessly. Doing so allows customers to experience products much more effectively with video’s audio-visual context. Customers can fully immerse themselves into the product showcase and interact with the video content to make the purchase directly without breaking the experience.
Understanding GenZ Shopping Trends For Business Growth
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Shoppable videos improve the shopping experience significantly as compared to a traditional E-Commerce experience which is two-dimensional, led by photos and text descriptions. The impact doesn’t just end at the experience but stretches across the funnel, helping brands improve their conversions. With Firework’s shoppable video technology, brands across the board have reported a 9-minute bump in average session times along with a 30% increase in add-to-cart rates.
According to DemandGenReport, 86% of buyers want interactive, visual, and on-demand content from brands. It comes as no surprise that 40% of marketers are already deploying shoppable videos in some form to capitalize on changing consumer behavior.
With shoppable videos, brands need to keep things simple by keeping the content length short, adding clearly-defined text callouts (hashtags work great) to help consumers identify shoppable video content. The idea is to match the visuals with the product links to enhance the visual experience for consumers, and help them complete the purchase with a one-click checkout process.
#2: Short-form Videos
Short-form videos are ruling the roost as the most effective form of customer engagement. With dwindling attention spans of under 8 seconds, brands are hard-pressed to create sticky online shopping experiences. Short video platforms like Tiktok and Instagram Reels have flourished with consumers looking to get a quick entertainment fix.
With short videos, brands can actively transform their digital customer experience and increase time spent on site. According to Wistia, websites with video have 2.6x higher session times than without.
Consumers have already made video content a big part of their shopping behavior. According to Wyzowl’s study, 66% of respondents preferred watching a short video to learn about a product or service rather than reading blogs or text-based posts.
Compared to other forms of content, short-form videos have a very high completion rate – 68% of consumers watch entire videos if the content is under 60 seconds, according to Vidyard. Currently, over 40% of India’s smartphone users already consume short-form content, and by 2025, close to 650 million users will be regularly consuming short videos.
#3: Swipeable Web Stories
Stories are the Internet’s favorite storytelling medium existing in a vertical, snackable form. Web stories are mobile-first, swipeable, and tappable – made for modern consumers, similar to the ‘stories’ content format seen on social media.
The quick nature of stories has made them a hit with Gen Z and millennial consumers, who prefer short videos. As a result, brand stories are reporting an 86% completion rate compared to other forms of content.
Every day, 100,000 new web stories are currently being added to Google’s search index every day. Google reports over 20 million web stories being online. Since October 2020, 6,500 new domains went live with their first web story.
Stories are incredibly popular with modern consumers, thanks to the prolific growth seen on short-video platforms like Reels & Tiktok. 70% of Gen Z consumers and 59% of millennials regularly watch stories on short-video platforms.
For business users, stories are an important part of their engagement strategy. An average user will consume 11-15 pages of a web story.
ESPN has embraced the web story format to revolutionize their digital app experience with a vertical video engagement feature.
Web Stories are helping brands improve user experience, improve tracking ability and provide total immersion to supercharge stickiness.
#4: Live Streaming
Live Streaming has caught on like wildfire and quickly become one of the most wanted video marketing features by brands post-pandemic. Forrester’s report suggests users watch live video 10 to 20 times longer than on-demand content, making live streaming a powerful way to deliver interactive content.
Live streaming commerce has taken the fancy of most consumers looking for an exciting online shopping experience post-COVID. The limitations of online shopping were exacerbated by lengthy lockdowns leading to the global rise of live stream shopping.
80% of audiences said they would rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog post, and 82% preferred live video to social media posts. According to App Annie’s state of mobile report, live streaming as a content medium is growing at 40% YoY, with a 9x growth in the last four years alone!
Salesforce’s latest State of Marketing report revealed live stream as the second most popular engagement channel, with 73% of marketers already leveraging the medium.
China leads the way in live commerce adoption, with an estimated GMV of 423 billion US$ in sales by 2022. In the US, the live streaming commerce market size is expected to touch 35 billion US$ by 2024.
Brands like Nordstrom, Walmart, Albertsons, Clarks, Aldo, Kraft Heinz, Samsung are leading the digital transformation journey by adopting live streaming as a channel to keep modern consumers engaged.
#5: Video-powered Phygital Experiences
Phygital refers to the blend of physical shopping and online commerce creating a hybrid experience that bridges the best of two worlds. With Live Commerce and shoppable videos, brands are entering into the ‘shoppertainment’ space by giving consumers access to storefronts, humanized interactions with influencers and salespeople, and a 360-degree product portfolio showcase.
46% of consumers prefer the physical shopping experience, but at the same time, data suggests that 63% of shopping journeys begin online. The ease of use, convenience, and quickness of online commerce definitely has a lot of takers, but consumers are starting to miss the experiential element of physical shopping. The solution? Phygital experiences powered by Live Commerce lets you do exactly that.
A recent whitepaper by EY stated that 77% of consumers have changed the way they shop, experimenting with newer forms of online shopping. The post-COVID world is ushering in an era of hybrid shopping experiences that gives rise to an omnichannel ‘click-and-mortar’ strategy.
#6: Short Video Ads
Video ads are hugely disruptive, as they regularly outperform static display ads that have poor click rates, and brands are noticing the dwindling recall impact which affects advertising ROI. With video ads, the engagement rate increases significantly as rich media content captures attention a lot more effectively, especially on mobile’s restrictive vertical viewing format.
A recent study by IAB reported more than 40% of marketers are using shoppable video ads to cater to changing market trends. The post-COVID world has seen the rise of a ‘storeless’ economy as the rising number of store closures and demand for online solutions are bolstering growth for shoppable ads and video advertising in general.
- According to reports, 68% of marketers have reported video as the more ROI-efficient option compared to Google Ads.
- Based on LinkedIn’s data, video ads outperform non-video ads to the tune of a 30% incremental engagement rate.
- Wyzowl’s 2020 study on the subject found that people share videos at twice the rate than other formats, and 84% of respondents reported being convinced to buy a brand’s product based on their video ads and content.
Summary
In 2022, brands will capitalize on video marketing trends to take their ecommerce strategy to the next level. If you are looking for a complete solution to get started, Firework can help. The Firework platform is helping brands revolutionize customer engagement by bringing a full-funnel solution that powers short-form vertical video, live streaming, and immersive video advertising on your website and app. Talk to us now to find out how Firework can transform your digital customer experience.
